flower, which assails the nose of a child, the song of a bird, which strikes his ear,
or the fleeting dream, which lingers but for a second in his sleep, has so
modified his brain that it will never again be as if these things had not been
experienced. Every sensory current which runs in from the outside world; every
motor current which runs out to command a muscle; every thought that we think,
has so modified the nerve structure through which it acts, that a tendency
remains for a like act to be repeated. Our brain and nervous system is daily being
molded into fixed habits of acting by our thoughts and deeds, and thus becomes
the automatic register of all we do.
The old Chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental and vital truth. These
celestials tell their children that each child is accompanied by day and by night,
every moment of his life, by an invisible fairy, who is provided with a pencil and
tablet. It is the duty of this fairy to put down every deed of the child, both good
and evil, in an indelible record which will one day rise as a witness against him.
So it is in very truth with our brains. The wrong act may have been performed in
secret, no living being may ever know that we performed it, and a merciful
Providence may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our deeds was all the
time beside us writing the record, and the history of that act is inscribed forever
in the tissues of our brain. It may be repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes
and be discontinued, but its effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain
with us a handicap till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great
emergency we shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and forgotten act.
We Must Form Habits.—We must, then, form habits. It is not at all in our
power to say whether we will form habits or not; for, once started, they go on
forming themselves by day and night, steadily and relentlessly. Habit is,
therefore, one of the great factors to be reckoned with in our lives, and the
question becomes not, Shall we form habits? but What habits we shall form. And
we have the determining of this question largely in our own power, for habits do
not just happen, nor do they come to us ready made. We ourselves make them
from day to day through the acts we perform, and in so far as we have control
over our acts, in that far we can determine our habits.
2. THE PLACE OF HABIT IN THE ECONOMY OF OUR LIVES
Habit is one of nature's methods of economizing time and effort, while at the
same time securing greater skill and efficiency. This is easily seen when it is
remembered that habit tends towards automatic action; that is, towards action